Saturday, 11 May 2013

BEING BLIND, BEING COBHAMS ASUQUO

Ace producer, Cobhams writes on lessons he learnt from being visually impaired

Preamble

I’m a dreamer, and I don’t mean that in the literal sense or in the
literal context of going to sleep and dreaming even though that’s very
nice because that’s when I get to drive and play golf.

But a picture of an average guy who lies down and faces the ceiling
and just dreams away. Fortunately for me, a lot of things I have dreamt
about in my life have come true. I believe strongly that one of the
strong elements that fuel my very strong sense of imagination and my
ability to dream is the gift of blindness. And I’m going to share with
you, a couple of things that I have leant and a couple of life lessons
that could be invaluable to you as well that I have learnt from
Blindness.

So to start with, I will state the obvious fact that I was born
blind. No one else in my family of six children is blind. There’s no
known cause. No links. No explanation. Just the reality that I cannot
see with my eyes.

I was born and raise in the military barracks. I don’t mean the
great side of the military barracks but the other side of the military
barracks. I lived in a small block of 18 two bedroom flats. I shared a
flat my two parents, my three siblings and whatever stray pet came out
way at a time. As well as my father’s Honda Roadmaster 180 Motorcylce,
which slept in the living room with me and my siblings for fear that one
of its mirrors might be stolen by morning.

In my neighborhood there were always something to look forward to.
My mornings were characterized by news of whose pumping machine had been
stolen by morning or squabbles between neighbours over who had eaten
their chicken. Actually some people try to resolve the chicken situation
by tying to attach a piece of red things on their chicken legs. I don’t
know how well it works…

Now, blindness does not have any physical, psychological or social
meaning. Since I’ve never experienced sight, I wasn’t aware that I was
without sight. And so, I indulged in the innocence of young boyhood. I
ran downstairs, jumped over gutters, played hard. Fought even harder.
And got into any imaginable trouble that a Skinny young child could get
into.

On a number of Occasions, I ran into walls. Ran into people. Ran
into furniture’s so hard that that observers will shake their head and
say in Pidgin English:

‘Person wey we dey feel sorry for, e no dey feel sorry for himself.’

Of course my response to such a rebuke was to scurry off and catch
up with my friends and hide whatever stray bruises I had sustained away
from my mother’s disapproving eyes.

Initially, scoffed at other people’s well meaning concern and pity,
because I do not understand what the force was all about. As I grew
older and I gained more understanding of the intricacies of living as a
sightless person in a world designed for sighted people, I was faced
with the looming possibility of failure in my life. But what I actually
considered to be much worse was people were ready to excuse my failure
because of my disability. Which brings me to my first lesson.

Do not Excuse Failure, for any reason on any account

Now, I don’t mean we should be unmerciful and impatient towards
those who are either less-able or weak or disadvantaged because I
believe that we should share one another’s burden, because we’ll all
face low points in our lives. What I’m saying is this. That failure
will come. But the same way that it comes that we should see to it that
goes. Instead, what I’ve observed is that whenever there’s a larger than
life seemingly insurmountable flaw, in a system, in our cities, in our
leaders, even in our own character, we tend to excuse the failure. We
overlook it. We pardon it. We indulge it. And become even comfortable
with it. Sometimes, we even find different terms for the failure. In my
country, we sometimes call it the Nigerian Factor. So, if something
isn’t working the way it should, we shake our heads, and we
automatically blame it on the Nigeria Factor. And then we move on with
our lives.

But see by excusing failure, and blaming it on some systematic flaw,
we miss the opportunity to scale through those seemingly insurmountable
obstacles. To elevate ourselves and elevate others.

When I turned 10, I was enrolled in a Primary Boarding School for
the Blind, fast forward to graduation day, teachers and other well
wishers were giving us advise on going into the outside world. We were
forwarned that we would come across people who be genuinely mean to us.
People will snatch away our guide canes, pull out our typewriter
ribbons, not give us the correct change, and generally just take
advantage of us because we are blind.

And from my experience, and I’m sure most of you must have discovered, not all public opinion is correct opinion.

So, I personally decided that I didn’t want to want to worry myself
about Guide Cane Snatchers, Ribbon Type writer thieves, and the likes. I
decided not to take that advice. I don’t know if it was conscious, but
decided to just trust. I figured that there was so many unfortunate
things in life that has happened to you regardless of whether or not you
were blind. So, why should I heap on an extra burden of worry on myself
just because I’m blind.

2. This is my second lesson, and it’s a tough one, to Trust.

I have learnt this from blindness to trust. Sometimes, even when I
have no reason to. And as you can imagine I have learnt this lesson over
and over again. now, as a child I was quite a Kid to have fun with and
play little pranks on. My older brother taught me how to jump over open
street gutters so anytime I was walking with friends and they inform me
that we were approaching a gutter, I would jump – No questions asked.
Pretty soon, I discovered that my friends were telling me to jump even
when there were no gutters. Just so they could have a laugh. But even
after I found out, I still continued to jump. I chose to trust them
because quite honestly, staying out of the smelly sewage gutters was
very very important to me.

Now some people might ask. Can’t a person be too trusting? But I
think trust has no expiration date. Blindness has taught me to keep
trusting. To keep hoping. To keep believing. And by the way in case you
haven’t heard, technology came along, thankfully. And not only did it
take the rhythms from the typewriter, it also took away the typewriters
themselves and replaced them with computers and screen readers.

And as for my guide cane story, I’ve yet to meet one friend of mine whose had their white canes snatched from them.

As a matter of fact, at some point I got too desperate and I went
ahead in my first year in the University to buy myself a Mercedes Benz
Wagon. It broke down on the first day I bought it. And I remember my
friend, we were trying to change the tire, and anyone who called me I
will say, you know what, I’m having a little car trouble. And
thankfully, we can afford better cars and I have a faithful driver, and
he’s under the watchful eyes of my wife. So no guide cane ‘stealers’ and
all of that.

3. Be blind to be focused

So speaking of my wife. My wife sometimes go shopping together. Now
note, I stressed the word, sometimes. Because while most men would share
my sentiments towards shopping. I really feel the same way for a
different set of reasons. Because shopping, as a female sport, and I do
believe it is, it is about feasting your eyes on goods and things of
assort. So you can generally imagine how quickly I will lose interest.

Now some time ago, my wife and I, we walked into a duty free shop at
an Airport. We wanted to buy a bottle of water. Before I knew it, she
had stopped by to browse through a magazine, had picked up a book…
seemingly normal actions for her but I found it quite alarming.

Now, here we were. We went in to buy an item but ended up browsing
for other stuffs. And that was when it hit me. Sight, sometimes, is a
distraction. Now, I have to say that when my wife goes shopping, no
matter how good her intentions are to purchase only the items on her
list, she somehow manages to come home with extras.

Good Deals! She will like to call them. She knows a lot about good
deals, and sales and half sales. And I have to say my wife is a
fantastic wonderful woman.

Now don’t get me wrong, sight is a precious gift. But on your way to
your destination, what you see, can also be a big distraction from your
goal. So, I have learnt that you have to be blind in order to be
focused. Focus is blindness in a sense. Im sure you can relate to this
because you have been focused on your goal and attained your successes
by being blind to several things in your life.

Now, we live in a culture that esteems sight over blindness. And
associates blindness with weakness. Yet, blindness in all of its
weakness, I have drawn some key strength in my life’s journey.

When I love the veil of childhood innocence, the brutal reality of
blindness stared me in the face. Self pity, and failure loomed over my
shoulder. Some, I’m sure would have excused me if I became a failure.
But I found it more fulfilling to break away from the expectations of
mediocrity. To successfully navigate and negotiate my way through life.
Even if it ruffled the feather of those who genuinely cared about me.